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Monday, May 7, 2012

Cartagena de Indias: Slave Port

Cartagena de Indias: slave port

Slave traders of New Granada, Peruvian and Ecuadorian traders anxiously awaited the arrival of slave ships to the port of Cartagena. During the seventeenth century the port city became the main slave market of all Spanish America.

Founded on January 13, 1533 by Pedro de Heredia, Cartagena was the gateway of the different peoples of Africa to what is now Colombia. It was situated in a generous and safe harbor for the arrival of the ships. Despite the lack of potable water, Heredia decided to found trust in the possibilities represented as a natural harbor.

Palenquera in Cartagena, Columbia

Bocachica channel is the old entrance to the bay. South of Tierra Bomba pipes are sandy, the most important is the estuary, which connects with the Canal Dock, built in the seventeenth century to put the port in communication with the Magdalena River. The Caño del Estero also gave access to the

Sinu and Atrato rivers.

The old Cartagena comprised the original nucleus and the suburb of Gethsemane, united by the bridge of San Francisco. The convents of Santo Domingo, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Clara and Santa Teresa were part of their most important religious buildings.

In 1586 Sir Francis Drake, English pirate, landed with a thousand men who came in twenty-three ships and sacked the city. The governor, Fernandez Bustos, fled to Turbaco while Drake was installed in his house and demanded payment of 400,000 ducats for the ransom of the port. He received 107,000 of the negotiations held with the Bishop of Cartagena, was caught as well as gold, silver, pearls and personal jewelry of the neighbors, 80 pieces of artillery and the bells of the city. 248 swept houses and knocked down three arches of the cathedral to show their ferocity.

That same year began the fortifications Bautista Antonelli. The Castillo de San Matias was built at the entrance to Boca Grande. In 1631 he erected forts on the islands of Manga and Manzanillo. Years later, Pedro Zapata built the Castle of San Felipe de Barajas. Shortly before mid-century had built the Castillo de San Luis in Boca Chica. However, efforts to fortify the city were not enough: in 1697 the French pirate raided and bombed the Pointis, starting with 2,000 gold marks.

Cartagena, Columbia: Street performers wearing orange and yellow costumes dance in the Plaza de los Coches under the Pedro de Heredia statue.

In the late seventeenth century Cartagena de Indias had 2,500 families of European origin. The slave trade was the main commercial activity throughout the century. Military, clergy and neighbors, also of taking advantage of the business of trafficking, owned land and slaves. A century ago there were about 68 Indian settlements near the city. African people replaced them with housework and urban areas. Meanwhile, the slave merchant vessels Portuguese, Dutch, French and English landed hundreds of thousands of Africans in captivity. In 1687 Cartagena had 1,952 slaves. In other regions of the province, as Mompox, there were up to 628 Africans or descendants of African people. According to Alonso de Sandoval, who published his book in 1627, for every European who lived in the city had seven people of African origin. [http://www.colombiaaprende.edu.co/html/etnias/1604/article-82643.html]

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Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

In the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate an often-ignored part of their history - Candombe and resistance.

Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero